Cassia Smith
Technical Data Officer and Database Developer for the SLS, University of Edinburgh.
Cassia Smith comes to the SLS after working with data in academic settings for over 10 years. In addition to her previous work as data engineer for the biomarker wing of a longitudinal study in the US, Cassia has experience in software development, metadata management, and public education. Her path to academic data curation was an unusual one, passing through an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing (2007) and a Master of Science in Library and Information Science (2018). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Cassia’s priorities are always user-focused data workflows, practical data preservation, and usable documentation. She has published a paper in the International Journal of Digital Curation on technical considerations when updating modular workflows, and she is constantly thinking about strategies for improving communication within research teams. She’s also a nerd who genuinely enjoys a day of Python coding or metadata assignment. Her tasks at the SLS involve maintaining, organizing, and improving SLS databases, metadata, and internal documentation.
